9 tained. It is worthy of remark, However, that the old bard has left us his own portrait, drawn by his own hand, in a fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius* If poets can praise themselves honestly, the passage evinces a rough undissembling spirit, congenial to that antique freedom of manners, which permitted men to speak of themselves, as of others, without restraint: Ingenio quoi nolla malum sententia suadet, Ut faceret facinus, levis haud malus, doctu', fidelis Sceitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum And here it ought to be remarked that, in the time of Ennius, the Latin language was less rude and unpolished than the specimens remaining of that author appear to indicate. It should seem that he affected, like our own Spenser, an antiquated diction to improve the interest of his composition, by removing it farther from ordinary life. Arpinum, at present part of the province of Terra di Lavoro, produced the greatest orator and philosopher of the ancient world; and Count Orloff has mingled some just and pleasing reflections with a rapid enumeration of the writings of Cicero. We cannot but speak in terms of commendation, also, of his sketch of Sallust the historian, which, though slight, is by no means devoid of that sound critical discernment which shows him competent to appreciate the great masters of antiquity. "Le royaume de Naples a eu encore la gloire de donner a la litté; rature latine Salluste, talent du premier ordre. Ce célèbre historien, mort quatre ans avant le guerre d'Actium, trente-un ans avant I. C. naquit a Amiternum, dans le pays des Sabins. Salluste fut élevé a Rome, ou il obtint la charge de questeur, et ensuite celle de tribun du peuple. Ses moeurs etaient tellement depravées, qu'il fut marqué d'infamié et dégradé du rang de senateur. Etant une fois surpris en adultère par Milon, il reçut une correction corporelle et fut condamné à une amende. Il perdit toute sa fortune par ses débauches et des vices honteux. Jules-Cêsar, dont il avoit embrassé le parti, le fit rentrer dans l'ordre des sénateurs, et l'emmena avec lui en Afrique, on il allait combattre le beau-pere de Pompée. Quand la guerre fut terminée, il fut envoyé au gouvernement de la Numidie on il amassa des richesses immenses à force d'injustices et de vexations. Il fit construire à Rome, du fruit de ses depredations, un palais magnifique, et des jardins dont l'emplacement porte aujourdhui le nom de jardins de Salluste. "Salluste a donné une Histoire Romaine dont il ne reste que quelques fragments; un ouvrage sur la conjuration de Catilina, et un autre sur la guerre de Jugurtha. Le style de cet his Noct. Attic. 1. 12, c.4, Edit. Vari, 1675. torien est remarquable par la précision et l'energie. Tout ce qu écrivait ce grand maître ne pouvait être dit ni plus laconiquement ni avec plus de force. On ne sait ce qu'on doit admirer le plus en SalJuste, de ses descriptions, de ses portraits, ou de ses harangues; car il réussit également dans toutes ces parties. Son laconisme l'a rendu quelquefois obscur, et ses digressions lui font par-fois aussi perdre de vue l'object principal de son récit; mais malgré ces defauts, il est à juste titre reputé comme un des meilleurs historiens de toute l'antiquité." (Tom. iv. p. 50, 51.) Velleius Paterculus, and Vitruvius, are names which dignify southern Italy. The last was born at Formiæ.* So carefully was he educated, and so diligently did he study, that he was considered as an epitome of all human learning. Julius Cæsar knew and loved him. He was munificently patronized by Augustus. His treatise on architecture is the only book upon that subject that has descended to us. It is obviously written with great inequality. The didactic parts of it are totally destitute of elegance or polish; but to each book there is a preface, written in a style of purity and elevation worthy of the Augustan age Horace, notwithstanding his own doubts as to the precise spot of his nativity, belongs also to these provinces: and the unhappy Ovid was born in the Peligni, now the Abruzzo; the Italian translation of whose Metamorphoses, by Anguillari, is perhaps the finest version of ancient poetry to be found in any language. From the time of Ovid, the reign of good taste and simplicity was no more. Words harmoniously balanced, antithesis, point, and an unsound floridness of diction, took their place. Statius was born at Naples, under Domitian, whom he flattered by the dedication of his two heroic poems. Count Orloff has dismissed this poet with a frigid mention: but Statius has been so long the agreeable companion of our lighter hours, and so little justice has, in our opinion, been rendered him by critics and scholars, that we cannot forbear claiming for him a distinguished place amongst the writers of antiquity. Ambition was the sin by which he fell: as he could not reach the Eneid, it would have been happy for him if he had not attempted it. Yet the faults of the Thebaid are more than redeemed by the exquisite poetry of the Silvæ Every piece of that miscellaneous collection attests the purity of his taste, and the gentleness of his character. He was alike skilled in the graces of the Epithalamium,-the tenderness of the Elegy, the dignity, if not the fervour and impetuosity, of the Ode. If, however, fervet immensusque ruit cannot be said of Statius, his poetry is a playful and sparkling stream, that makes sweet music as it glides. Gray was a great admirer of Statius. It is not generally known, that a passage in the • Maffei claims him for Verona. Veron. Illustrat. Genethliacon Lucani of this poet supplied him with the image, in his Progress of Poesy, of Nature unveiling her awful face to the infant Shakspeare. But Statius was emphatically the poet of Naples. Its clime, its atmosphere, its shores, were the chief sources of his inspiration. He was yet young, when the eruption of Vesuvius swallowed up Herculaneum and Pompeii. This memorable calamity sunk deep into his mind; and his descriptions of Naples are deeply shaded with the remembrance: Hæc ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam Cessat apex.— But the subjoined lines addressed to his wife, inviting her to meet him at Naples, present so lovely a portraiture of that city, that we must be permitted to copy them. We wish that modern Naples corresponded to it alike in every feature. ben Hic auspice condita Phoebo Et nunquam turbata quies, somnique peracti. Mores jura viris: solum, et sine fascibus, æquum. The night which so long overshadowed the human mind was now come: yet, in the deepest gloom of the middle ages, some faint glimmerings are to be perceived. The reign of Theodoric is rendered memorable by Boethius and Cassiodorus, who inspired their ferocious master, not indeed with a taste for letters, but with a disposition to protect them. Cassiodorus found a refuge from the distractions and violences of the times in a monastery, which he Calabria. himself founded in his native province of There he dedicated the residue of a blameless life to the instruction of his fraternity, in sacred and profane learning. While he taught them to feel the beauties of the ancient writers, he employed them also in transcribing their works; a pious labour to which we are indebted for many precious remains, that would otherwise have perished in the general wreck of knowledge. The stern domination of the Lombards, which commenced at the close of the sixth, and continued to the middle of the eighth century, was in truth the era of the extinction of learning in Italy: for even so late as the fourth century the pure writers of antiquity were admired and copied. Many of the great lights of the Christian church, particularly Lactantius and Chrysostom, enriched their apologies, and embellished their controversies, with illustrations from the poets, the satirists, and orators, of a better age. Nor was the lyre of the ancient muses, though struck by feebler hands, as yet unstrung. Rutilius, Claudian, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Prudentius, constitute a school of poetry in which the genius of antiquity still breathed. Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, and Ammianus Marcellinus, also, are by no means despicable as historians; and the Gothic dynasty could boast of Cassiodorus, Boethius, Ennodius, and other gifted individuals, who kept the embers of polite knowledge still alive. The iron sway of the Lombards was death to the whole mind of Italy. Yet, in these days of rapine and ignorance, the religious houses were uniformly hospitable to genius and letters. The Benedictines continued mindful of the precepts, and emulous of the example, of Cassiodorus; although their monastery at Monte Cassino had been wholly destroyed by the Lombards. Charlemagne availed himself of the zeal and talents of the learned churchmen of his age, when he restored the empire of the West; and the eighth century boasts of writers who would not have disgraced the second. Muratori* has collected some valuable historical monuments produced by the learned and industrious monks of Monte Cassino. The duchy of Benevento, whose territory in the middle ages comprehended the greater part of the Neapolitan provinces, had still preserved its independence; and the princes who governed them were great protectors of learning. This tranquillity, however, was soon to have an end; and after the dismemberment of Benevento, a period of tumultuous anarchy succeeded, which drew down upon that devoted country the Saracens of Sicily; and the arms both of the eastern and western empires. A handful of Norman adventurers took advantage of the feebleness and confusion incident to such a state of things, and laid the first foundations of a monarchy, which in later times powerfully influenced the destinies of Italy. At Salerno, where Robert Guiscard had established his court, a celebrated school of medicine had already been instituted. In the eleventh century it arose to the summit of its reputation; and the Leonine verses, which registered the lucubrations of that period in the art of medicine, contain aphorisms which retain their authority in the present advanced state of the science. It has been strangely supposed that this work was dedicated to Charlemagne; but that prince had been dead nearly three hundred years, when this compilation first made its appearance. In fact, it was dedicated to a king of England, as it should seem from the first line of the poem. Tiraboschi supposes it to have been Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, who had been entertained at Salerno, on his return from the first crusade, by Roger then Duke of Sicily. If the medical school of Salerno distinguished the eleventh century, the succeeding age was still more illustrated by the study and advancement of jurisprudence. We cannot enter into the much agitated question of the discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi. From this accident, however, may be dated the most beneficial revolution in the science of law. The schools of Milan, Bologna, Padua, and Naples, produced, in rapid succession, the great jurists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Count Orloff has given an exact chronological nomenclature of the various historians who flourished at this period in the provinces of Naples. Monte Cassino had the honour of producing the greatest amongst them. In these learned retreats also flourished, not only the celebrated Albericus, the great theologian, who so ably defended his dogmas before two several councils to which he was cited by Gregory VII.; but another ecclesiastic of the same name, one of whose visions, lately discovered amongst the archives of that monastery, is supposed, on very weak grounds, to have been the exemplar from which Dante borrowed the idea of his Divina Comedia. But the south of Italy passed under the mild rule of the Suabian princes, and the land of literature began to teem with a new produce. Frederic II. laid the foundations of an university at Naples, revived the medical school of Salerno, and himself cultivated the learning which he protected. His court was frequented by men of talent. It was under his patronage that the harp of Italy preluded its first sounds, and the Sicilian Muses contested the laurel with the Troubadours of Provence. Of the merits and misfortunes of the celebrated minister of that prince, Peter de Vineis, we quote Count Orloff's summary in his own words: "Un prince tel que Fréderic devait naturellement donner une puissante impulsion au génie des Italiens. Il fut assisté par Pierre Desvignes, homme d'un vaste savoir, profond dans les affaires, philosophe, |